Often she would not move around the tent or venture outside for a whole day, and when she did, it was with a limp of one leg or the other or both, which caused her to stoop as she walked, making her look twice her age. Yet she was no older than Moeder. At times, though, she would disappear from the tent without a word, leaving her children unwatched for hours.
Her head, she repeatedly warned us, “feels like it’s about to explode.” The third time she announced this, I began immediately dropping to the ground and covering my head. Once I was sure she recognized my act, I would peek out to see whether the danger of explosion had passed. She yelled at Klaas, hoping to chastise me by ricochet. Willem and Klaas caught on to the “explosion” response, and the three of us would fall as if we’d been shot. After a few times, she at least reworded that complaint.
“My head feels . . . ,” she started, as the three of us eased toward the ground, “achy.”
She was such a contrast to my mother, who greeted hardships with an appropriate scripture or a reminder that our sufferings were trivial when held against the sacrifices made by our men in defense of our independence. I expected as much from her. I had seen her suffer unspeakable pain. Moeder knew Mevrou Huiseveldt’s complaining wore on us all. Sometimes she would remind us—in polite tones directed at Mevrou Huiseveldt—to “think of the men, think what they’re going through.”
“At least your Matthys is still alive and well,” Mevrou Huiseveldt jumped in, missing the point. “My Jan has been captured and sent to prison on an island . . . Saint Helena.”
Meneer Huiseveldt was always “my Jan” to her.
“Our men are still fighting,” Willem countered. He stressed the word “fighting” as a point of pride that our men had avoided being taken prisoner. Klaas tore into him, and they wrestled until Moeder pulled them apart.
“But . . . but . . . Saint Helena,” Mevrou Huiseveldt said. “I don’t even know where that is.”
“It’s an island in the South Atlantic more than a thousand miles from here,” I said. “It is so remote that the British used it as a place of exile for Emperor Napoleon of France, and he died there in 1821. After that, slave ships headed toward America were captured and taken to Saint Hel—”
“Aletta . . . not now,” Moeder said.
“But Ma, she said she didn’t know where it was. . . . I thought she might like to learn something . . . factual.”
“Aletta!”
“She brought it up . . .”
Mevrou Huiseveldt began wailing, “My Jan . . . my Jan . . . a thousand miles from here.”
“The Lord God shall wipe tears off all faces,” Moeder said, the words sympathetic but stern.
“I wish they’d shoot me,” Mevrou Huiseveldt moaned. “It would hurt me less. And this food. They are trying to kill us all.”
“Mathilda . . . please,” Moeder said.
Indignant, Mevrou Huiseveldt pulled her children up on her cot and held them like a shield. They wriggled free from her grip. I didn’t blame them for wanting to be away from her. She was one reason I tried to escape the tent at every opportunity, and I think it was why Moeder so readily allowed it. She did not need the stress of my comments triggering more conflict.
The woman’s crying—loud and dramatic—would start as soon as we all turned in. When the sobbing ceased, the snoring began. When she was not in the tent, Klaas amused us with his imitation of her thunderous snores. He shook the canvas of the tent flap as if it were a bellows powered by her fluttering exhalations. Willem skittered back and forth as if being sucked toward the sleeping woman and then blown back by wind. The real thing was less amusing at night.
These early challenges of camp caused me to see that I was not quite the frightened weakling I had suspected. “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial,” my mother quoted almost every time she could sense I was readying to voice a complaint. As I developed the will to persevere, I lost an equal amount of tolerance for those who had not found that will. But the promise of God’s reward failed to subdue my disgust with a few things in camp. The latrines in particular.
Almost five thousand people were now crammed into our camp, and they all used the latrines. But the pits had been neither redug nor moved. Each time I used them, I brought my scarf to my face and breathed through the filter of cloth, but it did little to mask the stench. At times the air was so thick with bluebottle flies you might breathe them in. They clustered in your ears, where their buzzing would madden. And they fought one another for places at the corners of your eyes, where they sucked for moisture. All the while they spread the filth upon which they had trod with their many thousand twitching feet.
Bothersome, too, were those with no shame over their sounds . . . no better than barnyard animals. Perhaps it had been sapped from them over time, but I resented their absence of modesty and consideration. Yet I coped without comment, my stoic mother as inspiration. All adaptations required a balance, I learned. As I gained some control over my loathing of difficult circumstances, I grew less patient with difficult people.
At times the little ones clustered like a litter of playful puppies. They would roll and shove, and I withdrew, preferring to sit alone, pressing against the sidewall of the tent to find my own space. Sometimes I was so sensitive to touch that the rub of my clothes felt like a burn. I grew tender, as if swollen beneath my skin. I wanted to shout or cry or slap someone, uncertain which from minute to minute. But as an adult, I felt obliged to be mature and stable. Still, sometimes as little as a sharp word would pierce me. I watched Moeder, strong as if wearing armor. But I so often felt transparent as gauze.
As much as I despised the mud and the food, and the flies at the latrine, they were all just unavoidable parts of being in this place, and I had no choice but to adapt and to do so in a manner befitting the mature, thirteen-year-old adult I’d become.
3
Early October 1899, Venter Farm
Silent as a spirit, Oupa Gideon would steal me from my bed to take me outside and teach me the wonders of the sky. I was seven or eight the first time. I startled when he touched me; he sealed my lips with a rough finger. His eyes said, Quiet . . . trust me. He scooped up the blanket around me and carried me in a warm bundle. The scratch of his whiskers convinced me it was not a dream. He turned sideways to slip me through the bedroom door and somehow avoided furniture as he navigated the dark parlor.
“Can you see?” I whispered.
“You’re safe,” he said, and I was convinced I was.
The night air on the stoep always cleared my head. And on nights when it was cold enough to see my breath, I would exhale “smoke” from the corner of my mouth just as Oupa did, opposite the side where he held his pipe with clenched teeth.